


chase all the ghosts from your head

by transstevebucky



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: ... as fluffy as it's possible to be in the apocalypse anyway, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Flirting, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, M/M, as fluffy as is possible at the end of the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 15:53:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15561228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transstevebucky/pseuds/transstevebucky
Summary: It’ll be a great idea,Rick said.There’ll be a good chance of loads of loot,Rick said.It’s been ages since we’ve all been together as a family,Rick said.Daryl should have taken a fucking nap.





	chase all the ghosts from your head

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Syrabylene](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrabylene/gifts).



> syrabylene, you're such an angel. you're so supportive and lovely with all your comments and the donations you've given me (plural!) are so amazing and this doesn't come close to being thanks enough, but i hope you like it!!!! it might not be exactly what you asked for, but i hope it satisfies your want for domestic slice-of-life while on a run.
> 
> title from power of two by indigo girls

“I spy with my little eye-.”

“If you don’t shut the fuck up I’m disemboweling you and feeding you to the goddamn pigs.”

Paul turns to look at him with a betrayed tilt to his mouth, lip poking out like a toddler. “Aw, babe.”

Daryl sighs. “What does it begin with?”

“Great! Okay, so-.”

+++

 _It’ll be a great idea,_ Rick said. _There’ll be a good chance of loads of loot,_ Rick said. _It’s been ages since we’ve all been together as a family_ , Rick said.

Why the hell any of them listen to that idiot is beyond him, but apparently this is the life Daryl chose back at the Quarry, and now he’s gotta live with it.

“Well,” Carl says, knife digging under his nails, as if they’re not trapped in a tiny box of a room, cut off from the rest of the group by a small herd. Kid has some issues. Fucking _Rick_ and his _parenting_. They’re all gonna give him a fucking ulcer. “This is entertaining.”

Paul glances at Daryl, and then back at Carl, his own dagger flipping between his fingers with practised ease. “You hang out together too much.”

“I know,” Daryl sighs, knocking his head back against the chalk-colored wall with a grunt. “I should just goddamn kill myself.”

Carl gives him the darkest look possible with only one eye, and considering everything, it kind of works. “You’re the one who said it’s fine if I moved to Hilltop.”

Daryl is, on a deep and fundamental level, very aware of this.

Carl’d been wanting to leave Alexandria for over a year by the time he finally broached the subject to Rick; the place holds bad memories for the kid, and Daryl gets that more than maybe anyone else. The only reason Rick even agreed was because Daryl had been living permanently at Hilltop by then, and Maggie was the bravest leader of possibly all the settlements.

Rick knew that if he said no Carl would probably do it anyway, but unsafely in the dead of night, so now Daryl shares a trailer with his long-time boyfriend and his brother’s son, because God is dead and life isn’t worth living.

Carl spends most of his time sleeping in Enid’s room in Barrington anyway, though, so it’s not really putting a kink in things at all.

And Daryl _likes_ having Carl around. The kid’s funny, and smart, and compassionate to his bones; angry when he needs to be and calm the rest of the time. He likes getting to see him thrive, after those months getting back to himself after the war with the Saviors.

Not that he ever tells the kid that. Carl would never let him live it down, and Daryl might die of shame first, anyway.

“I did,” Daryl agrees, and the door trembles a little in its hinges as a walker presumably stumbles into it and then wanders off again. “All I make lately is mistakes.”

Paul snorts, and Carl glares at him, and Paul smiles because Paul’s the kind of asshole that does that, and Daryl loves his family but _Jesus Christ_ they are all just the _worst_ people.

“Carl,” Paul says, when it’s been quiet for a moment. He looks eerie in the tiny room, flashlight facing him so the bottom of his face is bright white and the rest colored dark. So fucking pretty, though. He’s ruining Daryl’s life and reputation. It sucks. “Did your Dad say anything about where he was going before we got cut off?”

Carl slides down the wall and rests his chin on his knees, flicking his switchblade between his fingers in an imitation of Paul. “No, I don’t think so. He and mom started talking about the Capitol building, and then he got this really creepy look on his face and I stopped listening before I blew my brains out. Why?”

Daryl knows the look. He gets why Carl zoned out of the conversation. Rick Grimes is a _leerer_.

“Just thinking if we could make it out and circle round,” Paul says, nudging Daryl’s thigh with his boot, “like Arlington, remember?”

Daryl goes through all five stages of grief at once.

“We don’t fucking speak about Arlington.”

Paul huffs. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“We don’t.” Daryl says, feeling like he’s having an out of body experience, “talk about Arlington.”

“God, _fine_. Anyway, do you think it’s possible? You were the last in here. D’you think the herd’s small enough to get around?”

The herd had consisted of about eighty walkers, all heavily decomposed and shambling, but ultimately still too many to fight off just the three of them. They seemed even more stupid than usual; probably because they’d been gone so long, and he, Paul and Carl had snuck into the building with its tiny meeting room, getting detected by only two of them in the process.

Sneaking around would mean going out one of the blacked out windows in their current hiding place, almost completely blind, since the room faces an alleyway.

The alley could be clear and the street filled to the brim, and there’d be no way to know until they got into the situation.

Conclusion: plan indicates Rick levels of common sense.

“Maybe if we covered ourselves.” Carl groans at that, lip curling. Daryl agrees, but he flips the kid off anyway. “Too many variables. We’d prob’ly be better off gettin’ to the roof first to get a glance below, maybe figuring out a way to get across the ‘tops to avoid the worst.”

He and Paul go on a lot of runs together; Hilltop is great, it’s _family_ , but it’s still filled with people and he and Paul both like freedom, the openness that comes with being out of the gates alone. They’ve gotten used to climbing rooftops and making their way through whole streets without touching the ground once, but Carl’s not been on as many runs as they have, no matter how hard he tries to convince Rick and Michonne.

Daryl knows the kid can do it, will do it, and will _exceed_ at it, the way he does everything, but if he gets Carl killed tripping off a building Rick will blow both their brains out, no questions asked.

Carl stares at them both blankly when neither move to do anything. “So…”

“So,” Paul says, and then cracks his knuckles, rising to his feet all languid and graceful like a cat, “don’t die, or I’ll kill you.”

“Hey!” Daryl hisses. “I got the monopoly on killin’ the kid.”

“Dad will kill you both first, anyways,” Carl points out, and starts checking his guns over, pulling his hat back into place where it casts a shadow over his face. “Are we going?”

Daryl nods, and when Carl’s turning to the door, Paul smacks Daryl on the ass with a wink.

Daryl has the worst taste in company.

+++

The building is mostly free of the dead; a couple of bumbling, deteriorated walkers who’ve probably been there since close to the beginning, and they’re taken down easily and silently with a few of Paul’s knives without even breaking a sweat.

Daryl leads the way and Paul takes up the rear, Carl in the middle between them with squared shoulders and readiness to flee in the clench of his jaw. He’s no longer the kid Daryl was sure wouldn’t make it when they first met. He hasn’t been for a long time.

The door to the roof is locked, so Paul drops down on one knee and starts picking the lock using a couple of the bobby pins he keeps in his hair.

“Are you gonna propose?” Carl asks, voice almost monotone, but there’s this excited twitch to his face underneath, like maybe he’s all for the concept of a wedding.

Paul snorts. “And be tied to this idiot for the rest of my life?”

Daryl grins. “Like I wanna be with your ugly ass anyway.”

Paul reaches one hand back and gives a quick squeeze to Daryl’s calf, _one two three_ little nudges of his fingertips to Daryl’s dirtied pants, and then gets back to fucking with the locks.

Carl smiles, sweet. “I like being around you guys.”

Daryl smiles back despite himself. “We like havin’ you around, too, kid.”

For a while, there, after the war, Carl’s health was touch and go. Shot and stabbed and dealing with depression from the idea of being a burden, he’d spent a lot of his time on a not-really suicide watch with Michonne and Judith at his bedside, Rick living on the edge of a panic attack for months at the thought of losing his son.

But then he got better. They found some meds, he started getting therapy from one of the guys out of the Kingdom, he went on a few runs, though not as many as he clearly wanted.

Carl’s words say more than what he’d ever admit out loud. He’d written letters, a stack of them, to the most important people in his life. His dad, Michonne, Jude. Maggie. Daryl himself, Carol. Enid.

Explaining how he didn’t want to keep going, that life wasn’t worth living without some kind of recovery time, that every moment being alive felt like getting a root canal.

Daryl stayed by his side a lot, too. And since Paul goes a lot of places Daryl does, they all bonded as a unit.

And then Carl moved to Hilltop, and started dating (and getting all mushy about it), and. Daryl loves the kid like his own.

He has for ages, now, but ever since the war he’s needed grounding more often, needed something solid.

Paul and Maggie were the people to do it first, Rick and Michonne, Carol when she was around. But helping bring Carl back meant he had to help himself, too.

Paul finally steps back, lock caught between his fingers, and he tucks it in Daryl’s vest pocket for safe keeping. He has a collection in their trailer, kind of similar to Aaron and Eric’s collection of license plates; something that reminds him that they’re alive, together, that they have something to come back for.

“Alright,” he says, nudging the groaning door forward, knocking against it with his shoulder, “we’re good.”

“Nice,” Carl whistles, “can you teach me how to do that?”

“This…” Paul says, “feels like a trap. Would your dad be okay with that?”

“Dad’s been wearing those jeans for the past two years. He’s not exactly a pro in the decision-making department.”

Daryl has to give him that point. Even Judith has started looking at Rick’s pants like she wants to set them on fire.

His pants, and his goddamn crocs.

“Fair enough. I’ll try and teach you. Just don’t use it for anything stupid.”

Carl sniffs. High and mighty, the leader’s son, with his gangly limbs and exposed eye socket. “I’ve never done anything stupid in my life.”

“You’re Rick’s kid,” Daryl reminds him, and Carl’s face goes from smug to horrified realisation in all of thirty seconds. “That alone is stupid.”

“I should have eaten myself in the womb.”

+++

Carl’s creepily adept at getting across the rooftops. Dances across them, almost, even with one eye missing and a growth spurt that’s been making him ungainly the last few weeks.

“I feel like a weirdly proud uncle,” Paul tells him, as he’s watching Carl take a running jump across the roof and landing in a body roll on the building opposite, “I think I might be crying.”

Daryl checks.

“You are.” He brushes a bit of Paul’s hair from his face, kisses the dampness on the high arch of his cheekbones. “Dumbass.”

“You love me,” Paul tells him, smile soft and gentle for this moment in time, the both of them working out how far they can get without touching the ground, “you love me a _lot_.”

“Sure I do, starlight. My reason for bein’.”

Paul’s grin goes a little wobbly at the edges.

Carl, from ten feet away, wolf whistles at them with all the enthusiasm of a dickhead teenager. “Guys! We have work to do! Come _on_.”

“I take it back.” Paul steps forward, fingers trailing along Daryl’s arm, leaving goosebumps in his wake, “I hate that little asshole.”

It’s another hour of hopping from roof to roof, climbing rickety staircases and using scaffolding as stepping stones, before they encounter a problem.

“Oh.” Carl whispers, voice cracking.

Daryl stares at the alley below. Watches the horde of the dead swarm, snarling over something they can’t see. The thing is screaming. A person.

Paul backs up. “I should be used to it. But…”

“Yeah.”

“We can get across, right?” Carl asks, and there’s a green tint to his face that says he’s extra cautious and a little nauseous.

“Um.”

There’s a fifteen foot gap, and the building they’re on is all solid concrete and nothing else. No ladders, definitely no scaffolding, and no fire escapes. The building they’re trying to get to is much the same, with the minor change that it’s brick instead of concrete. Good for footholds, but definitely not good from their angle.

“I,” Paul says, slow, “have an idea.”

+++

Arlington had been a bust from the moment they got out the car.

Dead standing dormant in the houses, stores completely raided, they’d been forced up onto rooftops with no other options available.

They’d been doing okay, until Daryl’d got a foot caught in uneven tiling and sprained his ankle, unable to jump any further, unable to move without help.

“You can go alone,” he’d told Paul, “come back some other time, draw ‘em away.”

Paul had stared at him with wide, watering eyes, shaking his head back and forth like the thought alone was giving him a headache. “No. I’m not leaving you, Daryl.”

“Babe.” Daryl had said, waving at his bloodied leg. “There’s no way I’m gettin’ out of here like this.”

“Then I won’t, either!”

Daryl had glared at him, then, arms crossed over his torso, ankle throbbing with every beat of his heart. Stupid fucking Paul Rovia and his idiotic loyalty. As if Daryl was worth dying for in any life, in any situation.

“You can get out,” Daryl sighed, “you’re a goddamn ninja, you could leave. Just leave, you idiot.”

Paul set his jaw. “No.”

“You’re gonna leave.”

“ _No._ ”

Of course, that was the moment the door to the roof broke open, and Daryl got dragged to the edge of the building by undead hands.

“Daryl!”

It was hard to breathe, hard to think, hard to do anything when he was swiping at the dead, kicking as hard as he could despite the agony spiking up his leg.

“Daryl!”

 _Not bit_ , Daryl thought, over and over, _not now, not gonna get bit._

“I have an idea,” Daryl called, and took one final sweep at the dead one’s leg, catching its frayed skirt between his fingers, and they both went plummeting over the edge.

“No!”

+++

“No,” Daryl says, immediate, the phantom sensation of air rushing out of his lungs nearly crushing him where he stands, “no, Paul.”

“There’s only two options, my love.”

Paul’s face is gentle, sweet, all loving and kind even though there’s fear in his eyes. He never looks scared.

Daryl stares down at the streets filled with the dead, the rolling groan moving towards them like debris on the sea. They don’t know they’re here, yet.

“What’s wrong?” Carl asks, glancing between the two of them. “What’s Paul gonna do?”

“Nothing, is what,” Daryl hisses, and presses one hand to Paul’s chest, feels the reverberation of his rapidly beating heart. Watches a line of sweat slide down his face. “You ain’t doin’ shit.”

“It’s me making that jump,” Paul says, and Daryl feels it when his breath catches, “or all of us getting torn apart while we’re still alive.”

“You could fall,” Daryl tells him, even though Paul knows that, even though they both know Paul’s going to do it anyway, the selfless asshole, “you could die, Paul. Don’t-. _Don’t_.”

Carl grunts next to them, fingers twitching. “What’s _happening_?”

“I’m going to jump,” Paul tells him, tendons in his throat tensing, “and your uncle is doubting me.”

“Don’t doubt you, asshole.” Except he does, a little, because they’ve been lucky so far, and luck runs out. “Don’t trust that goddamn brickwork, though.”

Paul smiles, sweet, licks his lips, and Daryl leans forward to kiss him.

It’s warm, wet, soft and frantic. It’s words unsaid about Arlington, and the horror Paul had felt watching Daryl fall on top of that walker, watching the breath rush out of him before he’d started covering himself in gore.

Paul tastes like honeysuckle, like home. Like everything Daryl thought he’d never get, all those years he spent under his father’s thumb.

He can’t lose him.

Carl squawks indignantly behind them, and Daryl flips him off with the hand cradling Paul’s jaw.

“Don’t die.”

“I wouldn’t know how to,” Paul says, with one last breathless kiss pressed to Daryl’s mouth, his cheek, his forehead. “Don’t watch.”

“I wouldn’t know how to.”

It goes in slow motion, after that.

Carl and Daryl watch as Paul backs up to the opposite side of the building they’re stood on, chest steady with purposely even breaths. He looks beautiful, all leather and brave-faced. Daryl commits this sight to memory, and tries not to heave.

Carl’s hand searches out Daryl’s. Daryl clenches the kid back, heart racing, swallowing back bile.

Paul runs, and then he jumps.

Daryl closes his eyes tight.

Carl’s breath rushes out of him. “Oh, fuck.”

There’s the thump, the scrape of heavy boots against brick, and then, “you guys are so dramatic!”

Paul grins at them from the wall, fingers caught in the bricks, and his knuckles are busted up and bloody, but he’s alive, and that’s all that matters. He starts climbing up, legs sprawled out as he scuttles up the building like Spiderman, dust falling onto the dead underneath him.

When he’s finally on the roof, chest heaving and grinning wildly, Carl lets go of Daryl’s hand and _hollers_.

“Idiot,” Daryl tells the kid, but he kind of wants to yell, too.

Carl just grins at him, all teeth.

 

+++

The trek around to where the rest of the family is goes relatively smoothly, after that.

Daryl only lets himself cry a little as he kisses Paul again, breath heaving, and Paul just calls him _sweetheart_ over and over again, voice sounding kind of wrecked.

Carl rolls his eye at them and hides the grin he’s wearing beneath his hand.

The sea of the dead falls under the rain of arrows, and Paul goes from looking exhausted to looking _ecstatic_ , mouth stretched wide and pink, eyes glinting under the sun.

“Dad is such a drama queen,” Carl says, fond, and Daryl grunts in reply.

Goddamn Rick Grimes and his penchant for drama.

Michonne shows herself, then, like some beautiful dark-skinned avenging angel, sword up and ready, slashing through the groaning crowd.

“About time you guys showed up!”

She looks happy, though, and they make their way towards her with their knives raised, scanning the roof of the building ahead of them and making out a group of archers in the rafters, primed and ready.

They get to Michonne, Daryl’s hand closing over her bicep for a moment with a breath that trembles when it leaves his mouth, and she leans in and presses a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you.”

“He’s ours, too,” Daryl reminds her, and watches as Carl greets Rick with a hug, “he’s ours.”

Rick watches them over Carl’s head, and Daryl smiles at him as easily as he can, but he knows it’s gotta look like a grimace. Paul presses one gloved hand to the small of Daryl’s back, warm and present. “Thank you.”

“Michonne already did that,” Paul says, wandering over towards the notorious leader, “and Carl can handle himself.”

“Yeah, Dad,” Carl whines, “who the fuck do you think I am?”

“Language!”

“Sorry. _Whom_ the fuck do you think I am?”

Daryl grins. Paul kisses him on the shoulder to hide his own smirk, and Daryl thinks about that ring buried in the bottom of his drawer. Thinks about a hand that fits so easy in his, a smile that makes his insides glow.

“I wanna marry you.”

“Yeah?”

Daryl smiles, one hand catching Paul’s golden hair. “Yeah.”

Paul dances on his tiptoes. “Alright, then.”

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you liked it!!!!
> 
> twitter: transrickgrimes  
> tumblr: gaydaryl
> 
> please talk to me about all kinds of domestic desus i Love Them with all my heart


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